Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Battle of the red lipsticks

Battle of the Red Lipsticks
When I was younger I would have never in a million years been brave enough to wear a bright red lip. But the more I have delved into the makeup side of things the more confident I have felt to be able to rock the red lip.
A red lipstick can totally give your makeup a classic look, aka Marilyn Monroe, as long as you apply it correctly, smudged lippie, and lipstick over your teeth is never a wise move.
I always tend to use a lipliner to outline the edge of my lips to prevent the lipstick smudging and bleeding. I then very carefully apply 1 layer of the lipstick, blot onto some tissue and then reapply to give the look some staying power.If needed, you can then apply a gloss over the top to give the gloss a shiny finish.
The two lipsticks I am going to compare in this blog are Rimmel's Kate Moss collection 01 and Mac's Ruby Woo.

The Kate Moss lipstick is on the left and Mac's Ruby Woo is on the right.

The 01 Lipstick is £5.49 in Boots and is a very popular shade. I found that when I apply it, it goes on quite smoothly and does not drag across your lips. It is very opaque in one coat, and you may not feel you need another as the colour is intense in just the one coat.

As you can tell from the swatch on my hand, it does have quite a shine to it, whereas I have found with other red lipsticks, they can be very matte looking and would need a gloss just to give it a little sheen, but this totally doesn't need it in my opinion. It feels quite moisturising, and the times I have worn it, I only needed to touch up after about 6-7 hours with only drinking one glass of water and a sandwich in that time.

Now onto Mac's Ruby Woo

This lipstick on the Mac website is £15.00!! Quite a difference from the Rimmel lipstick, wouldn't you agree? But, owning a Mac lipstick in your makeup collection, makes you feel quite proud, and you want to treasure them. That's how I feel about them anyway.

On application, straight away I noticed a huge difference in this lipstick to the Rimmel one because it is so very dry. It feels like you are dragging it across your lips. It is extremely opaque, and a beautiful rich red. This is totally matte with no shimmer or shine at all.

Even when swatching it dragged across the skin. I usually now wear this lipstick with lip balm underneath just to help it apply more smoothly. BUT, I have found the lasting power to be awful. I work a 4 hour shift daily. Once I finished my shift and looked in the mirror all I had was a red rim around my lip because as the lipstick felt so very drying I had to keep licking my lips to give some moisture back into them. Even with the lip balm underneath it still didnt stay very well. I feel this lipstick is lovely as long as you are prepared for the dryness and you are prepared to keep reapplying.

Here are the two lipsticks swatched side by side

So, my winner out of these 2 lipsticks has to be the Rimmel Kate 01 lipstick, because it is better value for money, easier application, and had longer staying power.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Let me know in the comments below if you have tried either of these lipsticks, and what your thoughts about them are,